The Covert Op To Destroy The Word “Freedom”

Jon Rappoport June 5 2013

American RevolutionThese days, “freedom” mainly refers to fairy-tale mass movements.

We’re supposed to believe it happens this way: A bunch of students sitting in a cafe suddenly go to their cell phones, pop over to Facebook, and say, “Hey, wanna be free?” And a Republic is born. Poof.

The evil dictator grabs a suitcase full of gold bars, wires half a billion dollars from the State treasury to his private account, makes a dash for the airport, and flees to Paris.

In the other popular version, rugged freedom fighters emerge from the forest with copies of John Locke tucked in their luggage, storm the capitol, engage the national police, and after a prolonged battle, pin a copy of the Bill of Rights on the dictator’s riddled corpse.

Or something like that.

But even in the preposterous fairy tales, nothing much is said about freedom of the individual. No, it’s all about the right to vote for a new candidate. Free elections. Democracy.

In other words, the people can now select a president who is sold out to the same people who backed the dictator. Maybe a slightly different group of bankers gets into the act.

The independent individual? Never heard of him. No such thing.

What’s important is the president of a country like America, thousands of miles away, can stand up on his hind legs and say, “We support freedom around the world.”

When you stop and think about it, this bait and switch works because of the impact the word freedom has on the minds of the population.

Say it and they stand up and salute. It doesn’t matter how far the word is being twisted. As long as the people like it and respond to it, you could be referring to a mass slaughter.

And if, by chance, the people don’t like a mass movement that trumpets freedom, because they recognize a deception, the media will call it freedom 24/7 anyway, because they’re paid to.

Political leaders who preach and teach about the need for “mass freedom movements” are never part of those groups. That tells you how deep the public trance can go. Relatively few people say, “Look, the president isn’t with the group. He’s separate. So how can he tell us what to think, what to do?”

It’s like a 400-pound man making diet recommendations.

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What, Exactly, Is Liberty?

FreemansPerspective.com May 28 2013

Franklin D. RooseveltMore or less every modern politician talks about “freedom” or “liberty.” Actually, they don’t talk about it as much as they use it as a magic incantation. They go on at length about “our free country,” but if you could get them to define freedom, that definition would be something along the lines of “what we have.”

Once we’re past such self-praising nonsense, we’re still left with the original question: What exactly is this “liberty”? And then the trouble begins. There are dozens of definitions. This is a problem. We’re all going around talking about liberty, but no two of us mean precisely the same thing. If you’re looking for reasons why liberty gets so little real traction in the world, this would be a good place to start.

So, it’s about time that we clarified what we mean by these terms. And, since I’ve spent decades pursuing liberty, and since no one else seems to be addressing this, I’ll take on this chore myself.

First of all, I’m going to treat “liberty” and “freedom” as the same concept. After all, the word freedom comes to us from old English and liberty from old French, and they both mean the same thing: unconstrained.

The problem with unconstrained lies in the fact that we are constrained by the natural world, by everything from gravity to rocks to weather. Nature constrains us. Yet, we don’t feel oppressed by nature – it isn’t trying to hurt us or limit us, it simply is what it is, and we can use it as we wish too. Our bodies are part of nature, after all.

It is when other people force us to obey, use violence against us, our simply intimidate us, that we feel constrained and abused. (Which tells us all we really need to know about the nature of liberty and humanity.)

So, here is a precise definition for freedom/liberty:

A condition in which a man’s will regarding his own person and property is unopposed by any other will.

That is the bedrock. From there you can add other aspects if you wish, but you cannot deviate from this core and still be talking about “liberty.”

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